Working with the Arduino is a lot of fun, and it is a great way to get your feet wet in the world of microcontrollers. But when you decide to start working on more customized projects, you will realize that Atmel makes a lot of different AVR microcontrollers and that you will need a way to program them rather than using a bootloader.
That’s where the AVR Dragon programmer / debugger from Atmel comes into play. The Dragon is inexpensive at about $49 plus shipping (Atmel store page). Because it is inexpensive, it does not come with any accessories – or so it seemed. One person told me that it came with cables. Another told me that it came with a single 10-pin Socket/Socket IDC cable. Because I wasn’t sure what might or might not come with the Dragon, I didn’t order any accessories until it arrived.
So for other people who may be curious about exactly what is in the box, here is the unboxing of the AVR Dragon that I received on September 10th, 2013.
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- AVR Dragon box – front view. Beautiful Dragon!
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- Back of AVR Dragon Box
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- Top antistatic foam layer when opening AVR Dragon Box
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- AVR Dragon Programmer in Box
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- Bottom layer of antistatic foam in Dragon AVR Box
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- Empty AVR Dragon Box
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- Top of AVR Dragon
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- Bottom of AVR Dragon
As you can see, the box contains only the programmer, no box, cables, or power supply. Next up Outfitting the Dragon AVR Programmer.
